Combination ovens that are capable of cooking using more than one heating source (e.g., convection, steam, microwave, etc.) have been in use for decades. Each cooking source comes with its own distinct set of characteristics. Thus, a combination oven can typically leverage the advantages of each different cooking source to attempt to provide a cooking process that is improved in terms of time and/or quality. For example, microwave cooking may be faster than convection or other types of cooking and may therefore be employed to speed up the cooking process. However, a microwave typically cannot be used to cook some foods and cannot brown most foods. Given that browning may add certain desirable characteristics in relation to taste and appearance, another cooking method may be employed in addition to microwave cooking in order to achieve browning.
The ability to use multiple heating sources may add to the complexity of cooking with some combination ovens. The number of options for employing cooking processes, and the number of unique combinations of cooking sequences for optimizing results over different food products may be quite large. Thus, being able to automate some or all of the cooking processes and still achieve good results can be a very attractive goal. However, it is also desirable to allow users with different skill levels and different interests in controlling the details of the cooking process to have wide latitude to use the oven in a manner that is most satisfying for their respective individual tastes.